Paris!

I’ve only ever posted on purplefoodie’s blog the one time. It’s one that I’d like to forget, and luckily for me you might not even remember. But a 4 night trip to Paris begs for a post of its own, even if it isn’t written by the author you are all used to.I’m orangefoodie, and I’ve shied away from posting on the blog for years, so go easy on me. Of course, there’s good reason. I’m not a chef or a baker or even a home-cook. Forget churros or tarts, I can’t even make a cup of tea! But I do love one thing – experimentation with food. And what better place to do so than on the streets of Paris, where I vacationed this past Christmas with a gang of cousins.

 

Paris is just such a wonderful city. It’s full of life and charm and warmth, even in the middle of Christmas winter. The people there are probably what makes the city so special. It will be hard to find such a high proportion of genial, charming people elsewhere, except maybe in an 80s’ Disney cartoon. A whiff of love is always in the air. You shouldn’t make the mistake I did of not taking your loved one with you. The first thing I did as soon as I got out of my hotel room was go to Le Cordon Bleu. Finding my way to the prestigious school armed with nothing but the name of a metro station that I could hardly pronounce, proved to be quite a task. In a lovely demonstration that summed up the spirit of the city, up came an old man with a walking stick, who strolled all the way over to me and walked 100 metres with me to LCB, then turned around and walked back to where he met me.

Le Cordon Bleu, Paris, was truly a special place. I picked up a bunch of material for Purple Foodie, and sneaked into the demo room. Of course, LCB has gained tremendous mainstream popularity recently due to its coverage in ‘Julie and Julia’, but this is where Shaheen has wanted to go for years now. If stepping in that kitchen can thrill a cooking imbecile like me, I can’t even imagine what a whole bunch of you might feel like once you do go there.

I did have what would turn out to be the best ham ‘n’ cheese crepe I tasted in the city right outside the Metro Vaugirard. Crepes in Paris are served as fresh street food in a whole variety of flavours, Nutella and ham-n-cheese (or jambon-fromage, which sounds so much better) being the most popular. It was still early in the day, so I made my way to a lovely, old-fashioned tea room at Rue de Rivoli right opposite the massive Jardin des Tuileries. This fancy little frilly shop called Angelina is well-known around the world for their famous Hot Chocolat l’Africain – a cup of rich, thick, dark and velvety chocolate, served with a large portion of whipped cream. No gastronomic visit to Paris is complete without Angelina’s hot chocolate, and this is always to be accompanied by their divine Mont Blanc pastry – made with a generous amount of whipped cream covered in chestnut puree and served on a meringue base.

Lunch followed right after. Another place I was advised to visit was Au Pied de Cochon, or, ‘The Foot of the Pig’. No prizes for guessing what their house specialty is, then. I had their breaded pig’s feet served with bearnaise sauce. Not just pig’s feet, actually. My potato frites were surrounded by parts of the pig that one would otherwise discard without a thought. Pig’s foot, pig’s tail, pig’s snout and pig’s ears (yum, yum, yum and yum!). Something tells me these guys don’t need to bother with halal meat. They also have another specialty, which is their French Onion Soup. It’s a huge bowl of thin soup with large slices of onion, a few slices of baguette, and a thick layer of gruyere cheese. Here’s a recipe I found, which seems quite authentic. The food surely lived up to its famous billing, and I would definitely come back for more, as long as I walked for an hour beforehand.

As you might have imagined by now, I arrived in Paris prepared. A few minutes away from my piggie wonderland was Rue Montmartre, famous for its cookware, bakeware and ingredients. Shaheen already had a list of things for me to buy for her. She’s got a few pictures of the stuff I brought back for her in her earlier post, so I won’t go into details. But the shops themselves were overflowing with a whole variety of products, most of which I hadn’t even heard of. For a Wednesday afternoon, the place was packed with people – overflowing even. For a moment, I felt like I was back in Bombay. But I had a great time shopping, which is a surprising thing to hear from a guy like me. I’m sure you’d normally spend days trying to find a variety of products such as what they had stocked in there. Well, I went back to my hotel with 4 bags filled to the brim in under 60 minutes of shopping. So you had better remember to carry a LOT of cash before you make your way to ‘Paree’. And don’t tell me I didn’t warn you when you end up spending almost twice your initial budget on things you never imagined you’d buy.

You already know this, but French macarons are famous all over the world. These sweet, light, colourful cookies that taste like crunchy clouds should be in your top 3 things to try when in Paris. I’ve heard tales of the macaron originating in Italy and Austria, but it’s difficult to convince me that the French aren’t the true owners of this divine piece of work. And who are we to argue with Laduree, the King of the perfect macaron. And if Laduree is the King, then Pierre Herme is definitely the Queen. They have a few branches littered across the city, and I went to the one at Rue Cambon. Now macarons are pretty expensive, but I bought a big pack of 12 – one of each flavour. I’m sure you’d like to see the hilarious videos I’ve taken of me eating each one of them while describing its taste, but you aren’t getting your hands on that piece of gold, na. But my personal favourite flavour was good ol’ chocolate and vanilla. Like I also said earlier, I can’t cook, so unfortunately I can’t provide you with a recipe of any kind. But, I can point you to the best resource around – David Lebovitz – Making French Macarons.

It goes without saying that the prime tourist attraction in Paris is the Eiffel Tower. This was a cold, damp and foggy morning, but it was surprisingly still quite nice. It seemed like Paris was asleep, except for a whole bunch of roadside chestnut vendors. These boys would call out to any tourist they’d see (oh, those damn tourists. Parisians supposedly hate them). “Namaste”, they shouted out to us. Wait a minute…Namaste?! In Paris? No Bonjour? No Good morning? Namaste, really? Turns out that the only people on the street at that time were all Indians trying to make a quick buck from a fellow Indian. No worries. The warm, boiled chestnuts were quite lovely in that weather. A quick “shukriya, thank you” and we parted ways.

When you do go to the Eiffel Tower area during Christmas time, remember this. Walk over to the Trocadéro (Palais de Chaillot) on an empty stomach. You will recognise it by the ice skating rink you can see from on top of the Eiffel. It’s another cultural landmark, and is famous for its Christmas Markets. I’m not sure this market is open at other times of the year, because the only time I’ve been there was on Christmas Eve. But anyway, venture out to Trocadéro and walk down the lane on your right (when facing Trocadéro), called Avenue Gustave de Suede. Make your way right down till the end of the lane, and on your right you will find the best streetfood locale in Paris. There was this one place that was run by a lovely family of four. They sold all kinds of fancy sausages and frankfurters. These huge, sloppy portions, served with a variety of sauces, vegetables and fries, are often to be accompanied by a glass of warm Christmas wine (3 Euros), and finished off with some fluffy chocolate eclairs. Trust me, you will never regret coming to this place.The evening was spent at Champs-Élysées, one of the most famous and expensive avenues in the world. The long street is littered with cute little cafés and other places to eat. It’s a sort of congregation area for many Parisians, and the place transforms itself during Christmas. Now, my stomach was exploding with all the hot dogs and eclairs that followed the hearty Italian pizza + lasagna lunch. But don’t worry about that when you’re in Paris. Fate takes over, and you are bestowed with the miraculous gift of being able to eat as much as you want, when you want. It is Destiny. C’est le destin.

Just like Trocadéro, Champs-Élysées is filled with hundreds

of stalls at this time of the year, selling all sorts of Christmas goodies, cakes, chocolates, breads, puddings, meat, sandwiches, and city souvenirs. But that’s not the half of it. The first thing I got my hands on were some authentic blueberry pancakes and sugar-coated chocolate waffles. These hot beauties are made right in front of your eyes, but are finished off quicker than they are made. I’ll never forget that blueberry sauce dripping off the sides of my waffle, with a dollop of whipped cream on top. The waffles were even better. So good that I don’t even remember what they were like, they just went straight from the counter to my mouth. Don’t forget to fill each square of the waffle with that thick, warm chocolate sauce (don’t take the ones where they just dab some Nutella on top), and drown the waffle in sugar powder.

Be sure to allocate more than 2 hours of your day just for this road. The waffles were just the beginning. A stall selling over two dozen varieties of dried fruit was our next stop. The tropical fruit stood out amongst the others – mango, guava, fig and papaya. Next up, chocolate coated fruit! This was a typical ‘carnival’ stall, and the lady here gave us a sampling of each fruit. They were all dipped in 3 varieties of chocolate – white, milk, and dark. Try the more traditional fruit here – banana, apple and pear. Take some nuts and marshmallows back with you for later, and try the red chilli as well. A few other stalls made the mark as well. There was this rotund British husband and wife selling fudge – 33 flavours of it. I picked mint, chocolate, vanilla, praline and the all-time favourite – caramel. Being Christmas, there were a fair few people selling warm-gooey Christmas Cake and Christmas Pudding. These were very, very rich and heavy. The Parisians somehow know their way around fatty foods. It’s either all the walking or the positive thinking, because I can’t remember coming across any overweight people at all.Still on Champs-Élysées, you’ll find stalls with slabs of meat and sausages being grilled, but what caught my eye was this open stall decorated like a Canadian wood cottage. It had a large wood-fire in the center, used to grill whole salmon over two feet long! Unfortunately, my appetite finally decided to bail on me after the pudding. On my way back, I came across this young couple selling freshly made churros – long, twisty sticks of fried dough dipped in a generous helping of chocolate sauce and covered in powdered sugar. I took about a dozen with me for the ride back, but soon realised I should have taken about 40 more.

Paris in the morning is very different from the hustle-bustle that I am used to back home. The city seems to be ambling on at its own slow pace, incongruous to the manic mornings that characterise most other world metros. Even the Starbucks Cafés in Paris somehow seem a lot different than ones elsewhere. I don’t know if it is the weather, the ambience, the people, the smell, but there is something special about a simple Starbucks outlet that shouts out to you in no uncertain terms that you are in a special city. I was just strolling the streets, when I heard one such café calling out to me. I hopped over there before breakfast for some…pre-breakfast. I had a Pain-au-chocolat (chocolate filled flaky pastry) for the 108th time, and a scone for the first time ever. Scones never looked interesting to me, but somehow I was drawn to this one. I knew intuition was on my side because I ended up having another one, along with some really rich hot chocolate. I’ve already placed my order for chocolate chip scones with Purple Foodie, so hopefully you might see a post on them some time in the future. And you don’t need two guesses to figure out who’s going to wipe that tray clean (I envy myself!). Anyway, I made my way back to join the others for breakfast, but picked up a fromage blanc au miel from a local store, queerly named ‘We Need Soup’. This quite literally translates to ‘white cheese with honey’. It’s a light, soft, white cheese mixed with some cream and a tiny bit of raspberry sauce, topped with a a stream of pure honey. I suppose this makes my pain-au-chocolat, hot chocolate and two scones a pre-pre-breakfast, then?

Paris does have a lot to offer, so one would think that the bus tours of the city would be the ideal way to experience Paris. That’s actually far from the truth. There are a lot of fantastic walking tours of the city, and ‘New Paris’ seemed like the best one. Plus, it is free! They work solely on tips. Don’t worry about missing out on a lot of things that a quicker mode of transportation would offer. These tours cover most of the important places to visit in just half a day. Don’t also worry about walking for 3 hours. You spend a lot of time just standing and listening. Kayla, our English-speaking guide for the day, was a university student from Canada who was here to study philosophy. Many students in Paris work on these sort of fun tasks, and earn more than enough pocket-money through their efforts. Kayla kept everyone interested by creating that interactive experience that a bus tour would never be able to offer. Once you’re done with it, you can head back to the Boulevard St. Michel where the tour began. Not too far from there is the legendary bookstore Shakespeare and Co, which has provided inspiration to hundreds of literary geniuses of this world. Along the narrow lane of the boulevard, you will find many greek tavernas offering cold seafood and delicious gyros. Here’s a video I found that showcases the food in the area very well. There are loads of coffee shops, boutiques, souvenir shops, and ice cream parlours littered around the street. This particular gelato shop called Amorino (you won’t miss it if you are on the street) offered a mind-boggling 27 varieties of hot chocolate!! Indulge.

There is a lot to be seen and done in Paris. And there is so much to be eaten, simply in terms of variety of food. French, Italian, American, Indian, Arabic, Greek, German, Spanish and Oriental; it’s all there, and it’s all really, really good. I ate so much in these 4 days that I gained over 5 kilograms in weight, which in hindsight was not nearly enough. No matter where you are from or where you have been, there are always new things to experience. Whether you

have been to Paris before or not, make it your goal to visit it in the next 2 years, and work towards it. I’m going back this year, no doubt about it. The people, the weather, the food, the sights, the language; it is all special. The city is surreal, a magical wonderland. The length of this particular post was going so overboard, yet you won’t believe the number of food incident’s I’ve omitted and the number of places that I wanted to visit but couldn’t. And of course, I’ve only described the food, not the hundreds of other things I did in Paris, including the visits to the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Stade de France, Roland Garros, Disney Land, Moulin Rouge, Christmas Mass at Notre Dame and many more. In fact, I haven’t even spoken of the three biggest gastronomic delights of France – chocolate, cheese and wine. All these tastes of Paris are those that will stick with you for life. You will spend agonising hours trying to recreate that perfect macaron or jambon-fromage crepe. And those of you that succeed, be sure to send some over, because each bite will only help in bringing back a tiny piece of Paris.

Paris, je t’aime.